


Tell Me There's No Other

by JellyDishes, witchGender



Series: Lyricism [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Autistic Gerard Keay, Enemies to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Queerphobia, Jared Hopworth - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Other, Slow Burn, Trans Gerard Keay, Verbal Abuse, [Chucks the canon timeline directly into The Spiral]
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25089376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JellyDishes/pseuds/JellyDishes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchGender/pseuds/witchGender
Summary: Gerry’s always known the Fears had an interest in him, but he thought he knew where he stood with them. Psuedo-servant of the Eye, enemy to them all. He had no idea the Spiral had tabs on him. Weird how things can creep up on a person.Ever since the failed Great Twisting, the Distortion has been limping around the world without much strength or direction, except for what is provided by the badly sutured transplant that is Michael Shelley. For the first time in years, they can agree on a goal. Gerard Keay needs protecting. At any cost.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley, Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion
Series: Lyricism [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817083
Comments: 15
Kudos: 69





	Tell Me There's No Other

It had been more luck than skill that led him to find the book, tucked away in the used book section of a rather ill-smelling thrift store. He’d been on his way back to the counter with an armful of Judas Priest CDs when that familiar prickle bumping up the knobs of his spine pulled him to a stop in time to see it. It was old, the cracked leather it was bound in stamped with _'Wild Animals I Have Known'_ in peeling gold letters with no accompanying author’s name. Inside the front cover was exactly what he’d expected to find.

He didn’t spend any more time looking at it than that, especially not with the heavy presence of The Hunt stinking up the place, just slapped it on top of his CDs and called it a job well done. In retrospect, it should’ve been more obvious to him that it was a trap. At the time, though, Gerry was just relieved that he’d gotten another _fucking_ Leitner off the streets. 

He was both surprised and utterly unsurprised when he stepped out onto the street to find that someone was waiting for him. It was that sort of day. "Listen, it's been a long day, and I'm tired. Could you do me a favor and just cut to the chase? Preferably not literally,” he sighed, eyeing those hands with distrust. He shifted his purchases to his off-hand so that he could dig in his pocket for his cigarette case. It made for a better security blanket than a weapon, but who was around to judge, except this asshole.

The person -perhaps it was generous applying just that word when ‘place’ fit just as well, but he could be generous when the mood hit him- standing before him looked normal to the untrained eye, but his weren’t. The world just _felt_ different around them, even if there weren't any quote-unquote visual cues, almost like the street ought to have been bending beneath their feet, and the fact that it wasn’t was almost more disturbing. And when they stepped forward, every instinct he had screamed claxon warnings that made him stiffen in place.

“I am not used to losing,” they said in what was a suspiciously normal, arguably even pleasant-sounding voice, right up until they laughed. That laugh made his head ache the instant he heard it, in a way he associated with staring at one of his paintings too long while looking for a mistake, or what he’d left undone. It echoed in a way it shouldn’t, and he knew then that the situation was worse than what he’d optimistically hoped was just a murder attempt by your average local cultist. “Especially not to something so obvious as It Is Right Behind You. I almost considered being insulted, Gerard Keay.”

The way they smiled afterward put his back up, even as it made his hand clench right around the battered silver cigarette case in his pocket. The smile was too big by half, but it was also too self-satisfied. Too hungry. Someone else might have been diplomatic and wisely decided not to poke the otherworldly tiger, but he wasn’t one of those people. Sometimes, when you were staring down pointed teeth, you just got the urge to punch them out of its stupid face. “Consider faster. Unless you want me to repeat myself.” Coming as this did less than two weeks after the disappointing encounter with the charlatan claiming to be Jurgen Leitner… Fuck another vacation, he wanted to retire. 

“Very interesting,” the avatar replied -couldn’t be anything else, not with the way his every joint ached around them in a way he’d come to associate with psychic nonsense as much as the rain- in an odd, almost sing-song cadence that put his teeth on edge. “You may call me Michael. We are going to be spending quite a lot of time together in the near future.” 

"Michael, huh?" It had to have been an old name, from the avatar's past life. Which was kind of weird, considering this thing clearly tangoed with the Spiral and never got off the dance floor. Most twisty bastards didn't bother with things as sensical and useful as names. "Okay Michael, I'll bite. Think you can make pulled taffy outta my brain? I'd like to see you try."

He both had and hadn’t expected what came next. He’d assumed a dramatic chase was going to happen and had already shifted his weight in preparation to show just how fast he could be in heavy boots, when the street started to run together like that taffy he’d mentioned. He had just enough time for the most heartfelt, “Oh, _fuck_ ” he’d ever given in his life before the world stopped making sense entirely. 

***

As it turned out, the inside of the distortion wasn't as disconcerting as he’d expected. It was much, much worse. 

Gerry did his best not to look too hard at any one place, if “place” was even a word that could be applied to The Spiral when it could just as easily apply to who and what and _where_ stood before him now. In point of fact, “Michael” was just as flimsy an attempt to pin down a splash of human shaped paint on top of a canvas made of too many substances for it to cling properly, where the paint ran and caught in odd, uncomfortable places, but it was the best he had. 

His eyes kept wanting to attempt to make sense of the way the landscape heaved around him -perhaps in a way almost but entirely unlike how it did after first stepping foot ashore after a long time at sea- but he had never had to deal with The Spiral itself (themself…? pronouns were just as laughable, weren’t they, Christ…) up close, not like this. He couldn’t allow himself to fall prey to its lack of designs, or he would be just one more name added to a disconcertingly long list.

His stomach ought to be unsettled right now, but no more than anything else should be. Should. There was another one of those words that was meaningless in a place that could and would ferment his brain until all of the life hissed out of him in a rush of color and noise. Gerry sucked his tongue between his teeth and turned away from any last, grasping attempts he might have made to do the impossible and let his gaze return to Michael. Even looking at them now was an exercise in trying to believe wildly disparate things at the same time -a person was a place was a where was a when was a how- but he managed. For now. “Well!” He said in a tone that was as bright as he ever tended to get. “You caught me before the Leitner did. Congratulations on eating me alive. I don’t intend to be anything but a craw stuck in your throat, but you can still attempt to swallow me whole if you like.”

Michael’s form rapidly expanded and contracted in a dizzying array of patterns that could have been interpreted as some sort of impossible to read emotion, one that only grew faster and faster, sending Gerry staggering back. “So confident in your own importance!” They laughed. The sound echoed long after it should have, rolling around him until Gerry grit his teeth against the almost overwhelming urge to cover his ears. It wasn’t as if it would do any good. “Why do humans always insist on scurrying the same ways again and again when the magnifying glass comes out?”

"Can’t speak for the rest of humanity, but considering I've spent my whole life being aware of things too big and evil to run from, I take some comfort in the idea that I can at least flip off the magnifying glass before it burns me alive."

Michael oscillated still faster, until suddenly the colors and sound and _emotions_ , even, slowed, if only for a moment. “And you think that would have served you any better against the magnifying glass than this?” Michael spread their arms -wings, flesh, hills, and words- wide, and things slowed down still further, but only for Gerry, because that sure was something, wasn’t it. 

“I’ll be honest, I’m trying not to think much at the moment. I get the impression that'll just give you more ways to churn my brains up like butter.” He wasn’t so much looking at Michael now as he was trying to focus on breathing. That, at least, was something regular and predictable. A reminder of his own continued existence. 

In, and out. 

In, as what could be made out of Michael’s face curled in a snarl that reminded him more of a tangled knot than the expression it was named for. Out, as he gave it up because sometimes he really couldn’t not, and went on, “So… this _wasn’t_ about rending my mind into tiny pieces?” That could have been good, but it very clearly was not. If the true intent had been any such thing, why not destroy the book from the start? 

Michael’s body shifted into what was, hilariously, almost a question mark shape, and he had to admit that it wasn’t a bad reaction to have. It gave a certain grim satisfaction. Sometimes it was less about getting an answer and more about having the balls to ask the question. 

If he could’ve, he would have taken the opportunity to lean casually against something when he next spoke, but as it was, he straightened his posture from the half-crouch he’d instinctively fallen into. His hands remained balled at his sides, however- some lessons were too ingrained to shake that easy. “I mean I'm not expecting an answer, of course - but hey, you're a spiral thing, maybe you'll surprise me. Being consistently inconsistent is, in itself, a form of consistency, after all."

Michael shifted in a way that was dizzying -were they moving closer or further away or both or neither?- and there was a distinctive edge to their answer that might have been frustration as they replied, “If you did not plan for risks, why pick up the book? What you got might not be what you expected, but… when is it ever?”

This time, it was Gerry’s time to stop and stare. “Really? This was about saving me from myself?" He laughed, a high giggle his mother used to tell him was girly. "I think I'm starting to get why they call you The Throat of Lies. So, what’s to keep me from walking right out of here?” Besides the very dangerous being he couldn’t seem to help provoking every time he opened his big mouth?

This close, Michael’s eyes were a riot of colors (and human pupils shouldn’t look like that, curled like a deep-sea clamshell), but they were also shockingly _afraid_ , wide and bright and framed by brows that curled in an agonized expression. “You can’t,” they insisted. Started to reach for Gerry but let the slash of their fingers hang in the air halfway between them for long seconds. “If you leave here you’ll _die._ ”

“If I stay here, I’ll die, too.”

“I won’t let it have you.” Fear twisted with a sudden viciousness that made a muscle clench in Gerry’s cheek. “It would have to cut through me, and I don’t exist enough in one place or one time for that to work.”

Gerry held very deliberately still, moving neither forward nor back. Either way could encourage Michael to attack. What was needed here was tact, which he’d never been accused of having. And anyone who had, didn’t do it twice. “But I do,” he said after enough seconds hung heavy between them that Gerry’s shoulders started to ache with the effort of holding himself back. “You can’t keep me here forever. Killing me slowly doesn’t mean I’ll leave a prettier corpse. I’ll be just as dead. We need to think about this.”

Michael advanced on him. Every step closer made them blur in a way that hurt to look at, made his eyes water and ache like he was staring into the sun. He refused to close them, though, not until Michael was close enough that he felt something radiating off of them that wasn’t heat but that finally made him stagger back and tear his face away. “I’ve existed countless years in what has felt like a few moments for you,” Michael said in a voice as taut and deadly as a length of steel wire, “and you accuse me of spending it… doing what?” They laughed. It was terrible and beautiful all at once, the way a sky turned green right before a tornado robs you of your breath, right before it steals away everything else. “Admiring you? What are you to me?”

“I don’t know!” He blurted out, winced, and then kept right on going. Why the fuck not? He was going to die either way, and he’d always been here for a good time, a time that felt _right,_ not a long time. “You’re like, this unknowable mass of a person, do you even know?” He half yelled it -more than half, if he was to be honest, and he always was, unless it was funny- and threw up his arms. 

The expression on Michael’s face was almost worth the nigh instantaneous pain as Michael curled one of those bristling cascade of knives they called hands around his shoulder. Even the mildest brush of those fingers sheared straight through his coat and into his skin. They both froze as Gerry let out a grunt of pain. The stabbing pressure didn’t relent, but neither did it go any deeper. “You are… You are just another human. You will sputter and die and it will all have been forgotten when I turn around.” Michael said in that exact same sing-song, except that their face had twisted with something Gerry might have called grief. 

"Well then, if that's the case, get it over with, will you? I haven't got all day."

Michael stared at him. Everything about Michael warped and shifted in endless waves, even their hair, except that look on their face. It was stricken, fear and anger and disbelief all at once. Michael’s lips curled. It was impossible to tell if it was going to be a snarl or a grin or a mockery of both, and Gerry stared right back. He was afraid -of course he was, he wasn’t made of stone, no matter what people said- but he also felt calmer than he had ever been in his entire life up to this point. Knowing that death was a certainty… it was rather freeing. The worst had already happened long ago, and now the last bit of mystery was being resolved right in front of him. 

And then, just like that, the invisible pressure that had been building and building broke. Michael averted their face the same way Gerry had just moments before, and as they did those fingers of theirs finally slid loose. It was a discomforting sensation, feeling blades that held knobs and knobs of bone no knife ever should ripple under your skin, but the sudden gaping absence of them was a blessed relief. “No,” Michael said. “You don’t. You shouldn’t, but I want you to!” It emerged almost as a wail. 

Whatever expression Gerry has on his own face was probably best described as the look of a man that felt the sand shifting under his feet and didn’t know where he was going to be swept off to next. This was exhausting and terrifying and infuriating, as any interaction with an avatar tended to be, and Gerry closed his eyes with a sigh. 

When he opened them again, it was with far more determination. He had a talent for understanding things that the crowd of humanity around him didn’t, even as he missed or misunderstood things that came far more easily to them. Body language, unspoken social cues… those were lost to him, and good riddance to bad luck. But give him sensory information that would often overwhelm anyone else, and he was right at home. It had always been that way as far back as he could remember, and he hoped it would serve him well here, which was nothing _but_ sensory information. 

He looked and he looked at Michael, and as he did, something… shifted. It was the only way to describe it, like staring at a 3-D puzzle until your eyes crossed and all of a sudden you saw the elephant on parade. He saw beneath the surface layer of confusing signals, to the much smaller silhouette of a curly-haired figure with their hands drawn up to clench about their head. “Michael?” Gerry asked, and something about the way he said it must have been different, because the outer layer of Michael didn’t look at him, where the subsurface layer… did. 

“What?” The word echoed the way everything Michael had ever said did, and within those ringing bells was the original note of astonishment. “What are you… stop! Don’t!”

“No. I’m talking to you, Michael, and I want you to listen.”

“Don’t look at me!” The shape of the person who was and had used to be Michael Shelley cringed. Gerry saw, and he didn’t look away. It was his duty to see, just as much as it was in all likelihood his best chance of surviving this. And if he felt pity, he tucked it away, where he kept everything that hurt. 

“Every moment that you don’t focus is another moment of my life dripping away. Do you understand? We need to work together if you want me to survive this.” Gerry’s frustration was bleeding out of him just as fast, leaving him struggling not to waver on his feet. He shifted his boots wider in a stance he hadn’t learned in any school of fighting that wasn’t taught at the end of a fist, and stared Michael Shelley down. “Tell me what we need to know.”

***

Events blurred together after that, or it felt like that to him. Speaking with Michael in the Distortion blurred seamlessly into the familiar confines of Pinhole Books. He didn’t question it, no more than he questioned why his mother was there or why he was looking at her from a foot closer to the ground. 

“It isn’t always about you.” This was a familiar sort of conversation, though the last time he’d had one like it he’d yelled it for half the street to hear. The way it came out now was a little uncertain and a lot exhausted. 

Mary Keay was looking at him. That felt wrong, in a way he couldn’t quite place. “So self-righteous! One of these days you’re going to get tired of reaching so hard.”

“I already am!” That came out louder, hoarse and cracked and aching. It tore his throat raw on the way out. “You make every day an uphill battle when it doesn’t have to be! Stop being my enemy and be my mother!” This felt wrong, too. He hadn’t said that, had he? But it felt right, too, something he’d always wanted to say but had never had the guts to. 

Someone else was talking, but it was far away and unimportant. Nothing else mattered, except for this moment and this overwhelming feeling of powerlessness that he’d lived with for far too long. He gripped his hands into fists so tight that he could feel his nails digging into his palms. 

“Is this truly how it happened? Are you sure?” There came that voice again, easily ignored. 

Mary stepped closer, and he stood his ground instead of stepping back or looking away when he was _almost_ sure that he had done at least one of those things. It was so hard to think right now, though. His thoughts kept blurring together in a way that almost felt like vertigo of the mind. He couldn’t do anything under its momentum except try to keep up. “You are going to stop what you’re doing and start thinking of what you aren’t,” she said. “None of that matters, not when we have the family to think about.”

“I _am_ your family!” He cried out in an agony of pain and anger and humiliation. “I matter more than kids I don’t even want!”

“That’s better.” Mary didn’t seem to be responding to what he’d said at all, like he’d said something completely different. 

And maybe he had, because somebody that wasn’t him was talking, too. Now that he was so thrown, it was that much easier to hear, “-nd you were much more insistent the first four times,” said the voice that he only now placed as Michael. 

Gerry blinked, and Mary Keay and Pinhole Books faded out at the edges, in much the same way that sense of unease had been fading in. He slowly became aware that he had been asleep and was now awake. The main difference was that he was consciously making decisions to move as he pushed himself to his elbows, instead of becoming aware of it during or after the fact. 

Gerry blearily looked around him at what was now becoming a comfortable sort of discomfort, similar to how he’d felt about a lot of things in his life. The world was of course much, much more odd than even his dreams had been, and Michael was of course much closer and much further away than he was comfortable with all at the same time. They were sort of… flickering in time to a rhythm he only gradually recognized as belonging to the song that he’d woken up with already having stuck in his head, Hell Bent For Leather. That made something twist in his chest, right underneath where the eye tattooed on his heart tended to ache like heartburn. 

Gerry very carefully buried _that_ and stomped it deep into the ground. Then he sighed and let his head loll back on his shoulders. “Good morning.”

“Do you sense the fear yet?” As the opener from an avatar, he’d heard worse than a Judas Priest reference masquerading as a threat. 

Gerry twisted his mouth. This probably wasn’t the best idea to do when Michael seemed as calm as they had gotten so far, but fuck it. He was tired in more ways than anyone had a right to be, trapped in a place literally designed to melt his brain, and had woken up with an avatar giving his deepest traumas a stirring from less than a foot away. It was also important to him to establish that he wasn’t going to allow Michael _complete_ control over him in this funhouse. He wouldn’t allow himself to be a victim ever again. 

So when he looked at Michael, he let his eyes glaze over and go unfocused so that he could see both the projection Michael clearly wanted him to see, as well as what -who- lay beneath. “Do you?”

The shivering figure beneath the gesticulating projection that called itself Michael looked up, and for a second time Gerry saw stark terror aimed at him. It didn’t sit very well with him, but for one thing, these weren’t what he would call ordinary circumstances. “Tell me what to do!” Michael Shelley pleaded, and Gerry narrowed his eyes determinedly. For another thing, this wasn’t the first time he’d been in a situation where he had to put someone through pain and discomfort in order to survive, and wouldn’t be the last. Michael had already been digested by The Spiral, and Gerry had no intentions of joining him. 

“We need to survive this,” is what he said (and didn’t _that_ give him the strangest sense of deja vu). “I’m not going to order you to do anything.” 

The person who was and had been Shelley clutched his own arms and huddled in upon himself (it was a struggle even for Gerry to maintain his shift in perspective when he could also see the ghostly overlay of the Distortion twitching and throwing out their arms). “Please help me. I don’t know what to do… you’re the first person who’s known I’m here. _I_ don’t even know that most of the time.”

That was interesting and implied a lot of things he didn’t have the time, resources, or ability to figure out. He would be frustrated and probably more than a little guilty about it later, but when it came down to it? Powers granted through his tattoos aside, he wasn’t the Archivist. He didn’t get anything out of being an idiot in the pursuit of knowledge besides a headache at minimum, and a casket (or several of them) at worst. He had given up a lot in the course of his life in the name of the family and then, later, himself (for once, for the first time), but he had no intention of sacrificing any of those things on the altar of curiosity. 

“I’m not exactly the best person to ask.” Gerry started worrying his lower lip between his teeth as he considered what next to say, teeth fitting neatly into the grooves of his chapped skin. “Telling you what to do is telling the other you. That never goes well for anybody.”

“I’m not them! I’m _me_!” Shelley gripped his arms tight enough that his knuckles went white. “Talk to me! Let me know I exist!”

Gerry’s mouth was dry enough that when he spoke it came out tougher than he’d intended. How long had it been since he’d eaten or drank anything…? “You’re here. You exist. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

***

Time passed... Probably. At least it felt like it had, and too much of it at that, but he had no way of knowing if that actually reflected how much time was passing outside of this twisted reflection of London. 

Part of that was probably his own inability to deal with being trapped in one place, something he had never been good at even in the short term. And that was back in the London that could accurately be called that, when a man could be reasonably assured that what he saw when he woke up would still be there by the time he got to his feet. There was no such guarantee here, no more than there was a guarantee that the goodwill of the being that called themself Michael would last longer than it would take for them to grow bored of him. And historically, it never took very long for anyone to grow bored of his presence, much less the living essence of a short attention span. 

Gerry was excurituatingly aware that his entire presence here was based around a ticking clock. And when that clock ran out, so would he. 

It didn’t help that he was starting to become unable to tell when he was awake or asleep. Just now, for instance, words were fading in and out of his hearing, like landing on a staticky radio station that was getting just enough of the next one over that you could sometimes make out entire sentences. Gerry didn’t know what he had been doing before that, save that his entire body ached, and his mouth was finishing a movement as if he had been talking.

 _Psychic nonsense,_ he remembered for some reason, and blinked blearily at Michael. “Everything hurts,” he managed after it became clear that his mind wasn’t going to be, and sighed. “What did you think was going to happen if you tried not to eat somebody that’s already in your stomach?” He said, but the words came out more exhausted than angry, for now. “That everything was going to be sunshine and happy bunnies? That we’d get along? Let me out. Let me out _now.”_

Michael moved relentlessly forward, slowly at first then in jittery starts and stops that leaped feet forward at a time, pressing Gerry back on his heels. “Why won’t you listen to me?” They asked, voice filled with a frustration that made Gerry’s mouth drop open. “Why must you do the very thing I have warned against time and time again? It will kill you, that book, and it won’t have mercy I show you, either-“

Gerry’s patience snapped. All of his simmering fear and anger and frustration boiled out of him in a near-wordless snarl, cutting Michael off with a start. “How is this any better than the book killing me?!” He shouted, throwing his hands down at his side in clenched fists. “You’re ripping me apart while I watch and trying to convince me that it’s better than a quick death, and I’m done! I am _done_ being a kept toy! Either eat me and get it over with, or fuck off!”

Michael went stock-still. Even the near-violent movement of the landscape around them jerked to a halt. “ _Eat you_ , you say?” Michael began to move again, a slow and sinuous movement that held Gerry in place, rather like watching a beautiful dancer at a concert, or a snake. “ _Get it over with_ , you say. You don’t know what you are asking for. I don’t believe I do, either!” They added with a laugh that came with barbs. This wasn’t amused, it was meant to intimidate. And it was working.

Gerry took a reflexive step back, then another. If he had truly been in the same physical place that he had left, he ought to have run into a building or a fence, maybe tripped getting off the sidewalk and into the street, but it melted and ran around his feet until he staggered. Gerry glanced down at his feet without thinking, then tore his eyes back up in time to see Michael just… disappear from where they had been standing and reappear within inches of his face. He swore and brought up a fist without thinking about _that_ , either, fight or flight or “get out of my face, asshole.” Michael simply held up the palm of their impossibly sharp hand and gently caught his thrown punch like it hurt them no more than the whispering brush of a butterfly wing. And probably it didn’t. 

“You ask me to feed on you, even as your entire being shudders in terror at my very existence. Do you know how very temptingly sweet you are, Gerard Keay?”

“That isn’t my name!” Gerry gasped and tried to pull his hand back, but it was stuck fast. 

“Oh… _that_ is interesting. Scared of the answer to either of those, are you?”

Gerry fought against several conflicting urges for a moment, then blurted out, “Why would I be scared of something that was never my name?”

“Never…? _Oh_ ,” Michael sing-songed, “you mean-"

“I _mean_ that my name is Gerry. It was _always_ Gerry.”

"Gerry... Cherry. Berry! How nice, even your name is sweet,” Michael went on, seemingly ignoring Gerry’s increasingly manic state, except that those eyes never left his. Gerry couldn’t bear to look at them for longer than a moment. It made his head swim and pound, all at the same time. 

“ _Don’t._ ” It came out a lot harsher than even he’d expected, and Michael’s eyes went wide with what was most likely delight or excitement or both. 

Michael shifted again, warping and flowing down his arm and torso and out his other side like water or… perhaps oil was a better word, because the contact left bright patches on his skin that buzzed and felt overstimulated. “Didn’t like that, either, did you? Humans are so _prickly_ and _nuanced_ about anything they aren’t used to. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? Perhaps distorted?” Another laugh, and this time it was impossible to tell what was behind it, save for that same will that made him want to run or scream or hit something. Gerry gritted his teeth.

"I think I get it. The old you, the person you used to be, is still in there, still hurting. Still pissed, I bet. And you wanna make someone hurt as much as you did, or as close as you can get. That's why you're taking your time with me. You're playing with your fucking food, aren't you?"

Michael tilted their head, and kept on tilting it. Gerry’s own ached in secondhand pain. _“You don’t know hurt!”_ Michael snarled. Within half a heartbeat they were right up in his face again, all of those sharp edges flaring like the petals of a flower. 

“Then tell me!” Gerry’s voice came out barely more than a gasp past the knot in his throat at first but growing stronger. “Don’t just throw riddles at me until I beg for mercy!”

“I-“ Michael flickered, and an expression that went past pain and into agonized settled into the corners of their mouth and drew it down and down and down. _“_ I know you for one of my own, an artist and a being unsatisfied with the words you were given, and I refuse to allow The Hunt to have you. You were mine! Always meant to be!” Gerry started to open his mouth, but was cut off in surprise as they went on, “But Michael Shelley still cries out words into the distortion, long after he should’ve become me! It shouldn’t _be_ like this!” They almost wailed. “Can’t! How is that bit of a thing still separate? It _hurts_!”

“So what you’re saying,” he finally said in what he felt was a very inadequate response but everything and anything he could’ve said felt that way, “is that the other Michael isn’t supposed to exist?”

Those impossibly deep eyes -extending deeper and deeper into what couldn’t have ever been London, far past the true limits of a skull- bore into his. “We are not we, and that, Gerry Keay, is not supposed to happen.”

Nothing he had ever learned had prepared him for this situation. Typical. But how often did books prepare you for how something -or someone- really was? His own mother had never known how to deal with his restless biting at his lips and cheeks, let alone how he never seemed to hear something properly the first time or how he was always somewhat off-kilter when interacting with whatever important person she was introducing him to that day. The Distortion was hardly comparable to autism of course, but in other ways, it really was. “You’re you, is there really such a thing as ‘normal'?”

Michael twisted their face. “Not anymore, Gerry Keay, if there ever was.” They paused, and then two voices overlapped. One of them was Michael’s and said, “And that is going to change,” even as a second, quieter voice said, _“Don’t! I can’t, I- I won’t! Not unless it means getting out of here!”_

“I, uh…” Gerry sat himself down with one leg crossed atop the other, and a sigh. He considered the wavering form of Michael Shelley, as well as the being who called themselves Michael where it overlapped into and through and above him. Concentrating on just one of them to talk with felt almost ridiculous, but no more than anything else in this place did. “Anything I can do now is uh… call it managing symptoms,” he said. Right about now what he wanted more than anything -almost anything- was a cigarette, if only so he would have an excuse to do something with his hands besides watch them shake.

“Managing-!” Michael Shelley pushed himself to his feet. It looked like it took about as much effort as it was taking Gerry himself lately, not that he liked to dwell on that. Which was exactly why he didn’t drop his gaze one millimeter from Shelley’s own. He deserved that much. “What are you saying? That there’s no hope of ever being normal again?” He was talking faster as he went on, but not angrily. There was only desperation and grief in his voice and the hands he held out towards Gerry in supplication. “You see me! That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

There was a sharp pang in his chest, and Gerry had to swallow down the urge to blurt out something reassuring. It would have been a lie. That was a mindset he’d struggled with many times over the years, more and more as he was getting older and tired. “All it means, is that I know how.” His mouth worked. “I can talk to you, offer advice, but I can’t save you. No one can. And I’m being eaten alive while we’re sitting here wasting time,” he added more sharply. It wasn’t aimed at Michael Shelley so much as at himself for this need bubbling up in his chest to do that very thing and waste precious moments reassuring a dead man, one who had in all likelihood landed himself in this position through no fault of his own. 

Sure, there were asshole victims aplenty, all you had to do was read the right obituaries and you’d find more than you’d ever wanted, but that didn’t mean they’d deserved what they’d gotten. And more often than not, he’d found that kindness was what brought ruin to so many lives touched by the fears. The sort of thoughtless kindness that made you question afterward if it had truly been the right choice when the truth was… there was no right choice. 

“You don’t know how to help yourself either, do you?” Michael Shelley looked pitying, now, a change that made Gerry’s stomach twist itself into knots for entirely different reasons. Michael Shelley’s outstretched hands slowly drew back to his sides, where they balled into fists. “You’re in the same position as I am, or- or worse! I might be part of it now, but at least I’m not going to just-“ Michael Shelley turned his face away, and Gerry exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “We can help each other, if you’ll just let me!”

He tried to focus on what to say in response, but it was becoming more difficult to process what Michael Shelley was saying. Gerry had difficulty with that at the best of times, but with Michael talking over top of him, too, he had to make a choice on which to focus on, and he picked the more dangerous of the two of them. 

“You’ve been trying to get my attention for a few minutes now,” he said. “Got something to say?”

Michael tilted their head, the long lengths of their fingers curling to frame their smile. “Next you are going to ask me what we should do. How does it feel, to go in a loop when you talk? To know that you’ve already asked me this exact question before, and that the answer…” They laughed that laugh again, the one that screeched like a rusty gate as it swung open and shut, open and shut. “Doesn’t matter?”

It felt like he was having two conversations just with the Distortion that called themself Michael, and both of them were frustrating. Gerry felt a scowl chase itself across his face despite his best attempts to fight it back - which, admittedly, were half-hearted at best. “I think I would know if-” he started to say, then stopped. 

Michael watched him with their head tilted, then said with a distinct note of amusement, “Do go on, wanderer.” When they smiled, their teeth were of wildly varying lengths and sharpness, all of them bad. “Tell me everything you know about how I work, and I will be very polite when I remind you about the scale you are trying to comprehend with words and picture books.”

Gerry could feel his face grow hot. He shifted his feet within his boots out of a need to move and move again. If he could have, he’d have begun to pace and slap his own legs, but he was hardly going to offer up a vulnerability like that right now. “Try not to look so pleased with yourself,” he grunted. He counted it as a success that it hadn’t come out sharper than that. “Weren’t you the one who wanted to save me? What do you call digesting me like yesterday’s pork?”

“You call it an inevitability, I call it… juggling ten eggs in the air. Eight of them are dead, never alive to begin with and soon to be even more, and two are delicate wings wrapped in textured protein.”

Gerry rubbed his forehead and then rested his head into the palm of his hands with a noise that could be described as halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “What did you mean, it doesn’t matter?” He tried instead, switching tacks. 

“You won’t remember we had this conversation, of course. You never have before.”

Gerry’s stomach sank below the level of his knees. He stared, mouth parting as he wrestled for words. “How many times have I asked you what we should do?” He managed finally, words emerging as a barely audible rasp. 

A flash of teeth that didn’t look anything like human teeth could or should, before they said, “Twenty-two times. Predictability wars with the human need to make things orderly. Which is, I trust you will discover soon, something of an impossibility within me.” For once, they weren’t laughing. “Us.” The word was layered thick with something that sounded a lot like discomfort. “Perhaps one of these times you will discover that-"

“-there is no right answer,” Gerry finished on a groan. 

“Oh! Well that is very pessimistic of a servant of the Eye, isn’t it? Of course there is. The answer is that every answer is wrong. That is quite different.”

***

There was another span of time that was disorientating even in its passing. Was it too short? Too long? Too full of moments he couldn’t recollect later, maybe. Probably. What did you call it when every moment felt like one of deja vu, except even more frustrating? He’d stopped asking how long it had been when the answers started to make too much sense. 

He didn’t know if he had tried to run or attack Michael or anything save for spending even one more moment trapped in this hopeless sort of limbo. All he knew was that the longer he was here, the worse it became for him. Not simply in terms of his physical health, but mental, as well. No one could remain trapped like this and not lose what mind they possessed, not even someone who had felt trapped throughout their childhood and young adulthood, just as a matter of course. He refused to spend one more minute like that, not if he could help it. 

So he didn’t. 

With little to guide him, Gerry simply picked a direction and ran. His trenchcoat flapped behind him as he pounded down heaving seas of concrete and glass and metal. If he had remembered -or cared to- he may have noticed that the movement was much slower than it had used to be, almost as if Michael was mockingly exercising greater control the weaker Gerry became, so that there truly was no chance of escape- but he didn’t. Refused to. 

He ran. 

Passing silhouettes swam by him like dim shapes in a wine-dark sea. It was impossible to tell if they were monsters or the citizens of the London he should have been in, or perhaps both. 

He had dim, insubstantial memories of having tried this exact thing a number of times before. Clearly they hadn’t worked before, but he didn’t care. This wasn’t those times. And even if it _did_ end much the same… it was better to pound your fists against a brick wall until they were bloody rather than stand there meekly while they built it around you brick by brick. 

He ran, and he almost allowed himself a moment of hope, until he finally slowed to a stop after an uncountable amount of time had passed and turned to see Michael standing directly behind him. Gerry recoiled with an inarticulate, wordless yell between his teeth. “Why?!” He shouted as he stepped in close and closer, echoing the way Michael regularly put him back on his heels. “What do you get out of stringing me along like this?” 

The answer of course was that Michael was feeding upon his fear, regardless of what they said otherwise, but it didn’t matter. He spat in Michael’s face even as he thrust his hands into his pockets and curled his dominant hand into the comfortingly familiar weight of a pair of brass knuckles. 

Michael started to speak, but he was no longer listening. 

Michael started to curl around and over top of him in a way clearly meant to cow him, but he was no longer watching. 

Michael’s projection fuzzed in and out in a way that sent waves of prickling pain over his skin, but he was no longer paying any attention to pain or discomfort. 

Before he had time to think or watch or listen and give in to that fear, Gerry ripped that hand free of his coat pocket and slammed it into Michael’s cheek. He watched as surprise transformed Michael’s face into something both more and less human, and for just a moment, the landscape flickered into something he recognized. 

Gerry didn’t hesitate. He ran. 

He ran, and the landscape around him settled itself back into something that didn’t make his very mind recoil to look at. Running past sidewalks and buildings and people that obeyed gravity and _made sense_ nearly brought him to his knees, but he kept going. Pounded his way down city block after city block without pausing to look behind him or question if he was safe yet, because he wasn’t. He already knew what he would see. 

He was wrong. 

It was almost like a joke, in hindsight. It was funny. Someone like him, where every detail of his bearing and appearance was clearly meant to instantly draw your eye as a bristling means of defense, almost running headlong into someone who couldn’t have been more unlike him if she’d tried. (He knew because he had tried. That was how he had ended up looking and walking and talking the way he did today.)

He didn’t know her. She was dressed like any one of hundreds, thousands, of other girls in the city with a soft, floral-patterned dress and dark boots. He wouldn’t have been able to pick her out of a lineup at gunpoint five minutes after passing her by, if she hadn’t gripped his shirt, spun him around with shockingly intense speed, and thrust him against the nearest building. 

His head hit brick with a _crack_ and his vision swam. He almost laughed. He finally, _finally_ escaped Michael’s distorted echo of London, only to end up caught not even ten minutes later by someone who could have been dressed in the clothes he’d long since donated to thrift stores. The items he didn’t choose to burn, anyway. 

That’s when he did laugh. 

He didn’t mean to, but looking at the snarl on her face that had too many pointed teeth and just the correct amount of eye shadow made him dissolve into laughter. Not because he doubted that she was very capable of killing him just as dead as anyone else -he only had to remember his own mother’s knack for a timely killing or five- but because the very notion of having his bones broken by the ghost of his own past so soon after escaping Michael made him wheeze with almost hysterical laughter. 

She stared incredulously at him for a second, long, flatly reflective pupils widening as she took him in. Her mouth started to move, maybe to ask him a question, and then must have changed her mind because she just hauled him back and slammed him into the wall again and again until his teeth rattled. He started to reach for the switchblade in his other pocket, but she only slapped it away with almost contemptuous ease. “I’ve waited long enough,” were the first words she said to him. “No more.”

Gerry could have used this opportunity to try to punch her with the bronze knuckles that still decorated his hand, but instead, he opened his big mouth. “So sorry to have inconvenienced you!” He grinned with bloodied teeth. “Next time I’ll try dying faster.” More laughter. 

“Why are you…? Stop laughing! I’m going to kill you, and you’re-!” She shook him, hard, but he couldn’t seem to stop laughing. He knew just by hearing himself that he didn’t sound intimidating, he sounded like a drunk. And not even one of the entertaining ones, at that. He was going to die in an alleyway at the hands of a teenager while whooping like an idiot. Not his finest hour, perhaps, but he didn’t have very many of those to start with. 

“So sorry!” He managed, without an ounce of sincerity or any indication that the bursts of laughter between every other word were going to stop anytime soon. “I’ll try harder to take this murder attempt very seriously! It’s an important moment for you.”

Whoever this avatar of the schoolyard was, she paused trying to be intimidating long enough for confusion to twist her features into a scowl. Then, that look shifted. He knew why. He would have been able to tell just by looking at her expression that something was more wrong than usual, even if it hadn’t been for the now uncomfortably familiar wave of vertigo that washed over him. 

His own expression must have been very similar to hers.

He had front row seats to an anger and dismay he understood all too well, along with her drawing Gerry closer to her in preparation for… what? Trying to kill him before the inevitable? Throwing him as a distraction, maybe, or biting out his throat with those teeth. Any of those would have come as something of a relief by comparison -if only because some of the thoughts he’d been having lately were disquieting enough that blessed silence might have been preferable- but neither of them found out. 

It was followed with a noise like scissors slicing through wet silk, and then the girl was being violently wrenched away from him. Gerry dropped down to his feet and then his knees as he watched long, knobbed lengths of finger impale the girl right through the middle. Michael hissed something didn’t listen to, because he was already moving. Gerry knew with a sinking, bone-deep certainty what was going to happen next and he was desperate to avoid it. 

He started to run, to kick and fight when sharp hands seized him, but it didn’t matter. Those hands still yanked him back and back and back through layers that burst apart around him like a scattered deck of cards.

Gerry Keay closed his eyes, and _screamed._

He could’ve helped it. Could’ve preserved some of that dignity that had seemed so important just a short while ago, but he could only moan in despair, now. Only scratch and claw at Michael’s grip around him. His fingers gouged furrows through what should have been flesh, and every tiny bit that lodged beneath his fingernails or dragged against his own skin burned and tingled like his hand was asleep. It clearly wasn’t impacting anything at all -Michael may not have even noticed- but he didn’t care, didn’t _care_.

The discordant echo of London settled back around him as if he had never left, and it took everything Gerry had not to open his mouth again and let out some of the static building up in his own throat. Instead, he sat. Simply lowered himself to the ground, legs already folding before him without him consciously deciding to, and he sat. 

Gerry often resisted the urge to stim when in front of others, but this time he didn’t give it a second thought before he started rhythmically tapping his hands against his thighs. He expected… a lot of things. Anger, certainly. Calling him a fool or a buffoon while threatening him again, at a minimum. 

Instead, Michael crouched before him and with a strange care began to remove his brass knuckles for him. Gerry stared at them with an almost blank expression, save for uncertainty lurking in the corners of his mouth like a secret. He’d forgotten he even had those on and watching Michael lift his hand by turning those fingers so that the bumps of their knuckles brushed against his skin rather than the points… 

Something unidentifiable twisted in his chest as he realized that they were trying not to hurt him. That realization felt like the drop and yaw of a descending elevator, all adrenaline mixed with something that didn’t quite feel like fear or awe, but something in between. 

Most of all, he was tired. Tired of being afraid, and not just of Michael or of any of this. He’d been trying so hard for so long to hold a part of himself separate from others. It was hard to remember now how he’d ever found the energy to do so for longer than a breath, let alone why. It felt like heaving up a much too heavy weight at the gym, but refusing to even acknowledge that he had, let alone let his trembling muscles find relief by letting it drop. But what other choice did he have…?

Gerry looked at Michael, and the outline of Michael Shelley beneath. He closed his eyes, and he drew in a breath, let it out. “Maybe we could start this over again,” he said conversationally, “since I’ll be spending rather a long time with you.” A laugh tugged at his mouth again, but this time he let his head loll on his shoulders as he eased it out on a sigh. “Hello, my name is Gerry. No last name. You’ll probably find that familiar, yeah?”

There was a pause, and then, “Easier to lock away than look at the contents, isn’t it, Gerry?” said one or both of them, and he just shrugged. 

“I’ll let you know when I have something to compare it to.”

***

There was no such thing as days or nights, only the waxing and waning of dreams. 

***

Gertrude was speaking to him. Gerry shook his head and offered her a strained smile. “Think I’m starting to show your age, fell asleep for a second there.”

Gertrude sighed at him, but there was that edge of amusement to it that didn’t make him defensive, the way he so easily became these last few years in particular. “The cult of Dionysus would have been closer,” she reminded him in a tone so unlike that of his mother’s snapped impatience that he couldn’t find himself turning towards her as she paced her office. Something about this felt off, overly familiar. He found himself wondering in a distant sort of way how many times he had heard this conversation already as he listened to her continue, “The themes of death and rebirth crop up again and again throughout many myths. I bring it up not least because it has quite a lot of bearing on what we find ourselves doing today…” 

Gerry tipped his head down with a laugh and started fiddling with the straps on his trenchcoat. “What, dying? I’ll pass.”

“I believe you just summed up the entirety of human existence,” Gertrude answered with one of those crooked smiles of hers. He knew looking at it that it wasn’t real ( _or had he?_ ), but there was a sort of comfort in knowing where the hits might come from. 

“Just because it isn’t a shiny new thought doesn’t mean it isn’t worth dusting off. Sometimes cliches are cliches for a reason.”

“Impatient as always,” she said with a clear fondness in her tone that he couldn’t help glancing up towards, no more than he could help how his hands slowed their fidgeting in surprise. “You are looking right past the point I am trying to make, simply because it isn’t as convenient for you.”

“I assume you’ll get to it at some point before that death you were talking about…?” He laughed easily. Everything was easy around Gertrude, which both was and wasn’t a comfort. 

“I believe a number of the fears tainted ancient legends such as these. Journeying into a forbidden place in order to rescue a loved one, only to lose far more in the process? That certainly is familiar, isn’t it?”

Gerry opened his mouth to laugh and say that the ancient Greeks probably had a better handle on it than they did now in a lot of ways, only for him to fumble in search of the words. Or maybe he’d said them but it was hard to place because the next thing he was aware of wasn’t any sort of transition between waking and sleeping, but an immediate awareness of the weight of interest on him. 

Gerry lifted his brows before he even opened his eyes. “Something on your mind?” He found himself asking. It was maybe -definitely- odd to speak to Michael the same way he would anyone else he was familiar with, but maintaining that distance after everything felt… Honestly? It felt like too much effort for too little in return. A pretense for no one’s benefit, not even his own. So he let it drop. 

He’d expected Michael themself to answer him, but it was Michael Shelley’s voice that spoke instead. “What is it like, out there?” It sounded faint and far away at first, but growing louder as he paid more attention. 

“You mean normal London? As close as London ever gets to normal anyway…” He shrugged somewhat helplessly but was unable to stop the smile that followed. “It was alive. Full of people being people. Didn’t get the chance to see much of it, but after all this? It was… well. Beautiful.” And it had been. He hadn’t even been in one of the prettier parts of the city that had been built to impress, but that hadn’t mattered. It felt like breathing fresh air after being stuck inside a ship for weeks on end, half relief and all awe inspiring. Then he paused. “Shit. Sorry. You’ve been here a lot longer than I have, you really must be-”

“Losing it?” Michael Shelley suggested with a quirk of his mouth that made even Gerry feel more tired. “Or losing something, anyway…”

“How long _have_ you been here?” Gerry found himself asking. Sympathy was more than creeping into his tone, it was bum-rushing it.

“I- I don’t actually know,” Shelley admitted. “ _She_ would know, though. Why wouldn’t she?”

Gerry’s expression stiffened halfway into the sort of awkward smile he offered people when he was trying to be comforting. “She? Who is she?” He asked, with a sick feeling in his stomach that he knew the answer already. 

The look on Michael Shelley’s face took that sick certainty and twisted it hard. “Gertrude Robinson, the head archivist of The Magnus Institute.”

Gerry got to his feet. He was distantly aware that he was swearing, and loudly, but he was rather more occupied with more important things. Such as the fact that the woman he had trusted, that he had told things to that he had never spoken aloud to any other living person… had betrayed that trust before he had ever thought to give it to her. 

He swore again, even as his arms curled tight around his stomach. Out of anything that had happened to him here, he had never felt _gutted_ the way he did now, like Gertrude Robinson had taken a melon baller and slowly, methodically scooped out his chest for… he didn’t know, a book or a tape or just for her own sense of satisfaction? “Why?” He rasped. 

“Why what? Did she sacrifice me to something I didn’t understand? I suppose you’d have to ask her,” Michael Shelley said with pained amusement, of the sort that Gerry was intimately familiar with. 

“Who was she to you?” Gerry asked. His voice sounded like it was coming from a thousand miles away and all too close at the same time. 

“She was my boss, but never acted like it even from the start. I thought of her as a friend, but, well… I suppose I thought of her as a mother figure, too. Someone who could be relied on, but…” Michael Shelley swallowed. He seemed to have to search for words for a moment, and even after he found them he spoke haltingly, as if every word were something delicate. Fragile, but also razor sharp if handled improperly. “Someone who needed me, too. I’d never had that before. And I suppose I never did.”

Gerry nodded to himself. He looked up at Michael Shelley, eyes blazing, and said with every ounce of certainty, “When I get out of here, she is going to pay.”

“Don’t do that. Not for me.” Michael Shelley hadn’t stood to follow him this whole time, in what Gerry only gradually realized had been a restless circle he’d paced around the other man. Gerry turned back around with a scowl and pointed at him with a finger tipped in black nail polish.

"No! No. You aren’t going to start that. I’ve had more than enough of that for one lifetime.”

“Why bother doing anything?” Michael Shelley asked. It wasn’t even bitter. It was small and quiet and defeated. “All I want is to go home. To be normal again.”

Gerry almost said _‘because this isn’t just about you,’_ but what came out of his mouth instead was a very determined, “Because of what you just said. Because you looked at someone who needed you, and your first instinct was to help.” He was reminded suddenly of his earlier thought that it was probably kindness that had been Michael Shelley’s downfall. He was not happy to be proven right. 

Michael Shelley stared at him as that thought bounced around, looking lost. His hands hung at his sides and shook as his mouth worked soundlessly. And for the first time in a long while, Gerry opened his arms and enfolded someone in a hug. 

Neither of them seemed to be very good at it. Gerry held himself stiff and awkward, ready at any moment to retract and apologize. He wasn’t accustomed to giving or receiving physical affection like this, and he had no way of knowing if it was even welcome. Before he could change his mind, however, Michael Shelley brought up his shaking hands and clutched them tight in Gerry’s jacket. “Thank you.”

Neither of them moved, but Gerry slowly relaxed. What he hadn’t anticipated was just how reluctant he himself would be to end the hug. It had been a long time since he’d had one, but it was more than that. Something about hugging Michael Shelley, in particular, made Gerry want to stay like this for much longer than was probably appropriate. 

He reluctantly pulled back before he could second-guess it and embarrass himself. He tried not to notice that Michael had lingered, too, and instead coughed into his hand. Something had been on his mind a lot during this conversation, maybe longer. It was hard to tell. “Listen,” he said slowly. “This isn’t-“ Another false start and stop, punctuated by him starting to toy with the buckles on his coat again. “I don’t think escape is as simple as that for either of us,” Gerry said hoarsely. He felt guilty for what he was about to say, but it was also the only thing that made sense. “I think… I think the answer is to integrate. To finish becoming the avatar."

Michael Shelley stared at him. For just a moment, shock and betrayal flashed across his face in the widening of his eyes and the drop of his mouth, and for that moment, Gerry wanted him to react. Not to have to feel it, but just to do something in his own defense for _once_. 

Then the moment ended, and Michael Shelley sagged. “I know. I think I always knew. What other answer could there possibly be?” He sketched a half-hearted attempt at a smile up at Gerry, who wanted nothing more than to have been able to see his real smile. To talk with him outside of all of this, before life found either of them. “There’s no escaping what Gertrude wants.”

Gerry shook his head and reached out to take Michael Shelley’s hand. “She has nothing to do with this. This is about you, and the only way I know to keep you from disappearing entirely.”

Michael Shelley gripped his hand tight, then deliberately relaxed his hold and smoothed his thumb over the back of Gerry’s hand. “I’m afraid,” he said in a soft, shaking voice. “I already lost myself once, and there is no coming back from it this time. What if- what if we’re wrong? What if there isn’t anything of me left after we do this?”

Gerry almost stopped himself from reaching out on impulse, then swallowed and finished the movement. He cupped Michael Shelley’s cheek and leaned in after it, closing his eyes as he pressed their foreheads together. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “Not for sure. But what I do know is that if you don’t, that chance we have for you to continue in some way is gone. It is our only chance. Your only chance. But I won’t make you.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight. “If you want to die as yourself… I get it. I do.”

Michael Shelley breathed fast and unsteadily against him, panted breaths through his nose that felt like at any moment he would stop entirely. That made Gerry want to lean in as close as he could and breathe for him, keep him here with him as long as he could... But he couldn’t. That had always been beyond him. The only thing he could do was to sit beside Michael Shelley. 

“What’s your name?” Gerry asked after Michael Shelley’s breath had evened out and the resulting silence hung heavy enough between them that he couldn’t bear it any longer. “And I don’t mean what they called you, I mean your real name.”

Michael Shelley stopped with his mouth halfway through starting to say something. He gave a startled bark of a laugh, and scratched the back of his head. “I, uh. It’s stupid, but…” He laughed quietly. “I always wanted to be the dashing hero, you know? Someone everyone would admire and knew could be counted on, that the boys would…” He flushed and shook his head. “One of those people who only used their last name.” He laughed again and hunched his shoulders self-consciously. “A pipe dream, obviously. Who will even remember me, let alone my name?”

“I will,” Gerry said at once. “I’ll remember. And you’ll remember mine for me.” He then stuck out his hand. “My name is Gerry.”

His hand was stared at for several long moments, then the other man took it and gave it a single shake. “Shelley. My name is Shelley.”

***

Sometimes, the landscape around him slowed enough that the difference between it and regular London felt gossamer thin. Like if he reached out and just pushed hard enough, he could manipulate it himself. It was ridiculous of course, but when he looked at Michael, he thought of every occasion in which they could have easily hurt him, but hadn’t. 

There were a lot of things that could be said about what that meant. Some were the sort that made him go quiet in thought while he stared in their general direction, while others were things that anyone with a semester in Psych 101 could rattle off to him. However, he’d long since made a point of not psychoanalyzing his own life. It would’ve been easy to throw around words about his childhood, too, but once you got started doing that you would never stop. _PTSD. Autism. Anger issues. Insomnia. Dysmorphia._

He knew all too well how tempting it would be to try and distance himself from his own experiences like that. Some people, that would help -his own quote-unquote lifestyle could be called a box, and he had never felt so comfortable in his own body- but he knew himself. He had spent too many years already trying and failing to make his problems neat and tidy and easy to bury down deep where he wouldn’t ever have to think about them again.

He was done with that life, for better or worse. 

Just now, that meant watching Michael, or as close as he could get to it - the more effort he could feel and see Michael exerting on the landscape around them to minimize its effect on him, the harder it seemed to be for Michael to maintain other aspects about themself. Like, for instance, the boundary between themself and Michael. He very deliberately tried not to think about what that meant. 

On one of those occasions (it was impossible to tell how many in), Michael seemed to grow tired of being watched. They twisted to face him, which in this case meant shifting the direction they were looking in to face him, without ever actually turning their body. “Something on your mind?” Michael asked in that same tone that always sounded so amused, but beneath it Gerry could feel something else stirring. Or maybe he was just getting to know Michael well enough by now to make an educated guess. 

“More like something on yours,” he replied. “That’s really why I’m still here, isn’t it? You don’t know what you’re feeling but you like it, and you don’t want it to stop.”

Michael drew themself up to their full height for several long seconds. Then, as Gerry watched, they wilted in place. “I can't be understood!” Their voice was every bit as unsteady as the world around Gerry suddenly was not. “That is defying everything I know to be true, and it _hurts!”_

“I know,” Gerry said with a gentleness that surprised even him. “But that isn’t what makes it hurt. It’s that you and Shelley are still separate, isn’t it? You aren’t meant to be this way, and it’s going to tear you right down the middle. Would either of you survive that?”

Michael’s silence was very telling. 

Gerry didn’t make it easy on them by answering for them. They also didn’t look around at what he could tell just from the way every one of his senses wasn’t rebelling, meant that he was back in the London that obeyed the law of gravity. He didn’t step away from Michael, didn’t acknowledge where he was at all; because while it was every kind of relief to be back in a place that wasn’t slowly, invisibly killing him, there were other things that needed his immediate attention. 

_Is that really all there is to it?_ He found himself wondering, and shook his head with a scowl. “If you want me to stay, you have to give me a reason to.”

Michael watched him for a time. “I believe I know the best course.” they said. 

There was a noise from beside him like a door opening, when he knew that a scant few seconds before, it had been a blank wall. Gerry very deliberately did not look at it with anything but his peripheral vision. “That’s a good start, but not that good.”

Michael flickered like fireflies were spinning beneath their skin, then they said, “What if I told you it was a good ending, as well?”

Gerry allowed his mouth to close before he’d properly begin to open it, and finally looked at the door. He recognized the construction style of it as that belonging to those within The Magnus Archives. He felt that twist in his stomach again, but this time it was far more pleasant, and made his cheeks tingle and grow hot. “That… isn’t bad, no.”

***

The strange door slowly creaked open. The Archivist turned around, though she already knew who she'd see in the doorway.

"Hello, Gertrude. It's been a while."

***

Michael didn’t immediately come to collect him again, though he could always tell when they were close by. Perhaps he'd been marked heavily enough by The Spiral that he was getting a better sense of what shouldn’t ever be made sense of, or maybe it was just that every sense he had went haywire whenever Michael seemed to be paying attention to him. 

“I’ve been on worse first dates than that,” Gerry said aloud. He didn’t look around for Michael, because he already knew they were there. His eyes had been aching and giving him double vision more and more lately, in any case (it had been happening long before being brought here, but he hadn’t noticed it happening in a long enough time that it’s sudden reappeared was off-putting, to say the least), and he’d been doing his best to ignore it. “Remind me to tell you about the time I was tricked into attending folkfest.”

“You aren’t using your eyes to see me,” Michael observed without answering the previous implied question, which wasn’t any kind of a surprise. “Is it because of the growth in your head?”

“Really?” Gerry asked, tilting his head back where he was sprawled on the “ground,” for lack of a better word, looking at Michael upside-down. “Maybe the poor jokes are because of the human stuck in your throat.”

“What would make it into a good joke?” It seemed sincere, though Gerry had his suspicions. 

“Joking about cancer is one of those ‘punch up, don’t punch down’ kind of things, I think,” Gerry said. “Solid marks for effort, though.”

“I…” Michael frowned. “We don’t like the idea of you leaving.”

“Well, good, because I don’t plan on going back to my shithole apartment anytime soon. You’re… I don’t know,” Gerry said awkwardly, fidgeting with the curved horseshoe barbell hooked through one of his gauges. “You make me want to see what happens next. That doesn’t happen often to me, historically.” 

“I could take you further into myself and reach into your head,” Michael was saying without pause, “but I do admit that I might put you back together wrong. Maybe The Boneturner, he-”

There were more words, but he couldn’t really hear them. Gerry knew that what he was saying was important but he felt so _odd_ … His smile hung crookedly as he tried to keep up with this conversation against a sudden disconcertingly intense vertigo. He started to say something else, but without warning what felt like a bolt of lightning lanced up his spine, bursting every thought or feeling he had along the way like popped lightbulbs. Gerry spasmed, back bowing in a sharp curve as two voices cried out at once, mingling into a discordant cry of horror. 

Everything went dark. 

***

The world was moving slowly when it swam back into being around him. Sound, motion, everything flowed with glacier slowness as Gerry looked around himself without lifting his head from the ground. 

He was somewhere else, somewhere _real_ . A few feet away, he saw a pair of dress shoes. “You can help him!” Came a voice that sounded like chewing tinfoil felt. “You _will_ help him!”

Beyond them was a set of dirty work boots, accompanied by a voice filled with so much gravel it was a wonder that person wasn’t spitting pebbles every time they opened their mouth. “Oh I will, will I? I’m still waiting to be convinced as to why that is.”

“I can give you many things, Jared Hopworth.”

“I don’t believe I want any of what you have to give,” this Jared person grunted. “Try again, if you have to.”

This was around when Gerry tried to sit up, which was a mistake. The world whited out at the edges as he tumbled back onto the ground. 

It was some time later before the world came back to him, or him to it. The first thing his eyes refocused on was a pale, drawn face and long curls curtailing the space between where it was bent over his own. “Don’t be awake,” he was told. “I am bargaining for your life and need to concentrate.”

“I sculpt flesh and bone,” the second voice said from a thousand miles and more away, “and last I checked, you don’t have any of those.”

The curly head of hair started to turn away just as Gerry tried to lift a shaking hand and missed. “I’ve got bones.”

There was silence for what could have been just a few seconds, or entire lifetimes, then, “He says he’s got bones.” This was said to someone else, and then a large, disturbingly contorted face was peering down at him. “You’ve got 32 right there, won't miss a few, will you?” Jared Hopworth leaned in still closer and pressed a similarly oversized, pointed hand into and through his cheek without leaving a wound behind. Not there, at least. 

The pain was splitting, but the high peak of it was over quickly, leaving four duller, throbbing pains on all four corners of his mouth. There was just a moment's pause filled with a tiny clinking like freshwater pearls or candy machine prizes rattling together, and then that hand passed into and through his forehead without pause. 

Gerry screamed. He must have, because later his throat felt like rough sandpaper. At the time, however, he was much more aware of the unspeakable agony of feeling thick fingers moving through the inside of his skull, probing. It seemed to go on forever, but then at last Jared withdrew his hand. Something small and red and wet was rolling in that twisted palm, before it was pulled out of sight. “That ought to’ve killed you,” Jared Hopworth said in a conversational tone. He was already turning away now that he’d done what he had been paid for, and Gerry simply… stared. 

That something so small had been killing him slowly from the inside out this whole entire time felt unbelievable, insane, and yet here he stood, having survived The Spiral in more or less one piece. He felt… tired, empty, hollowed out in a way he couldn’t have been able to and still be alive. He winced and rubbed at his head as he turned to look for Michael and Shelley. He knew he would recognize them now, but it was coming back in chunks, and not without pain.

He only found Michael looking back at him, and Gerry went still for a reason he wouldn’t have been able to explain to anyone else. “Shelley?” He asked cautiously, and his heart sank when the immediate answer was a simple, “No.”

“Are you Michael, then?” He asked with more impatience, standing stiff and tense as he glared. 

“No.” Gerry’s mouth worked, until The Distortion tilted their head at him. “I am both, and neither. Are you still the same person you were as an infant, or ten years ago, Gerry No Last Name?”

Gerry stopped. “What?”

“Would you prefer, ‘Gerry, Lord of Himself’?”

A powerful wave of relief nearly brought him to his knees. Gerry tried to speak, but for several seconds he could only look at them and hold out an unsteady hand that hovered halfway between them.

Gerry remembered seeing fiberglass insulation once, when the bookshop was under construction. He'd been young enough to try and reach out to touch the fluffy pink substance, pressed between sheets of brown paper like strawberry candy floss in a lunch bag. His mother had yanked him away and scolded him, saying that the fibers only looked soft, and would slice up his hands if he touched them. He wondered if Michael's hair was like that - if he could plunge his hands into the apparent silkiness and come away bloody. His experience with touching Michael's skin (dizziness, numbness, burning) told him it would be stupid to try. His curiosity that had never been sated by the fiberglass wanted to try anyway.

So he did. He reached out and gently brushed his fingers through impossibly soft curls that felt, somehow, more real than curls had any right to. As if they were more solid than he himself was. He couldn’t help his soft, slightly awed smile as he curved his hand to fit against their cheek. “See? I’m fine.” he said, more to the memory of his mother than anyone else. Looking at Michael now, he wondered how he had ever missed that look of intense concentration on their face. 

“So that’s it?” He asked slowly, searching their face intently for some sign of what he must have missed. “You just... clicked together? Just like that?”

The Distortion opened their mouth, and all that came out at first was a strange sound that almost sounded like the old dial-up noise for a second. “It-” They stopped, and Gerry felt that he understood the saying about butterflies in your stomach for one of the first times in his life. Uncertainty and excitement and a small, but fervent joy spreading through him like warmth on a cold day. “Neither of them wanted you to leave,” they said haltingly. “They were concerned, Gerry, and in their fear their minds were united on what they needed to do. On who they needed to be.”

Gerry’s mouth parted on a soundless laugh, because it really was funny. All of that time spent looking for someone to be his hero so he wouldn’t have to be as a child, and all he had to do was to be nearly devoured by the two halves of an avatar. He ducked his head for a moment. Relief and wonder and disbelief all fizzed in his blood as much as any passing brush of Michael’s skin against his own, and he laughed again, just because he didn’t know how else to release an entire lifetime’s inheld tension.

He was still giggling when he then brought himself close enough that he could feel his skin tingling, as if he held his hand just over an old television screen right after it had been turned off. The Distortion held themself still. “It will hurt you,” is all they said as they looked between his hand and his face, but they weren’t stopping him or turning away. To the contrary, they were leaning slightly into him. 

“I can take it,” Gerry said. He then closed the distance between them until his face was just shy of theirs when he asked, “Do you want me to kiss you?”

There wasn’t the slightest hesitation when they replied, “I always did.”

The kiss started off as a soft thing, all inheld breath exhaled as a shudder as Gerry pressed his lips to theirs. For a moment, all he felt was warmth and an excitement that made his heartbeat thrum in his chest. There were pins and needles in his lips almost immediately, but not so bad that he had any intention of stopping, and in fact deepened the kiss. 

For a moment -a small, heart stopping eternity- there was only that giddy thrill. Then The Distortion’s eyes flew open wide as they let out what could only be called a squeak. That was when it started to hurt. Not intensely, more of a quick, sudden jolt like somebody had ripped duct tape off of his lips and he was suddenly aware of everywhere he had been held back before now. Mostly by himself. 

They made to pull away, and he didn’t stop them. His lips had left behind the faintest tinge of red behind on theirs. The Distortion immediately began to protest, but Gerry just waved a hand. “I’ve had worse just from picking at my own lips. I’m fine. And you are, too,” he added. “I think we’ve earned whatever sort of happy ending this will be.”

“Don’t you know?” The Distortion asked him, with a smile that curled and curled. “There is no such thing as endings, happy or otherwise, only the part where people choose to stop telling it.”

“That’s not what I think,” Gerry told them, eyes downcast towards where his hands fit neatly within the expending shape of theirs. He was close enough, however, to know that smile only existed on the surface. Beneath it, was something else. 

“And what do you think, Gerry?”

Gerry smiled a smile of his own, soft and slow and meant only for them. “I think that there are endings. And that they don’t make everything else matter any less. It’s just… a change. And you’re good at those, aren’t you?” The quirked eyebrow he aimed at The Distortion said otherwise. 

_~ End ~_

**Author's Note:**

> A second, sequel fic detailing the encounter with Gertrude will be incoming by my writing partner and included in this series, if anyone is interested! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this far, and know that I appreciate each and every kudos and comment. You all make this worthwhile <333


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